awesome comments

Xianhang ZhangBumblebee Labs

1dub talk - October 2nd 2008

2 person team

3 months old Goal is to build “provocative social

software” 1 product release, 2 more in the

pipeline Happy to talk more after this about

collaboration.2dub talk - October 2nd 2008

3dub talk - October 2nd 2008

For many people, commenting is their first

and possibly only foray into the social web

4dub talk - October 2nd 2008

“Communications tools don't get socially interesting until they get technologically

boring”– Clay Shirky

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 5

There has not been much innovation in the comment space

Slashdot pioneered their “Karma” system in 1997

To this day, I’m not aware of any other system of that level of complexity

most major sites are still using the most basic commenting systems despite their obvious flaws

6dub talk - October 2nd 2008

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8dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Signal/noise ratio is too low

Insightful comments get lost

Lack of readership due to low quality

Hard time keeping track of the narrative thread of the conversation

Despite this, people yearn for conversation (Herring)

9dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Small, personal blogs read largely by friends and family

Social networking appsHighly targeted blogs aimed at a

professional audienceSites cultivating return audiences

rather than drive by, search engine traffic

10dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Large sitesSites with high traffic per pageSites with low traffic per pageEntertainment sitesSites with an influx of new usersSites with controversial topicsSites with low community

involvement

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 11

Poor explanation:

There’s a lot of stupid people out there

12dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Better explanation:

13dub talk - October 2nd 2008

We rely on social cues to determine acceptable behavior

14dub talk - October 2nd 2008

We rely on social cues to determine acceptable behavior

Online environments lack a richness of cues

There are no repercussions for pathological behavior online

Gresham’s law applied to commenting: Bad conversation drives out good

Some small percentage of misanthropic users (ie: trolls) ruin it for the rest of us

15dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Moderation Increasing barriers to participation

(registration, captchas etc.)RatingFilteringDisemvowellingROBOT 9000

16dub talk - October 2nd 2008

For conversation to happen, there must be a narrative thread.

If I refer to Comment X, you must have read Comment X to understand my reference

Rating systems must keep the chronology intact while making highly rated comments visible

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 17

This is most often done via threading

Heavyweight approach, lots of intricacies

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 18

Initial site developed over 12 hoursVery simple concept

19dub talk - October 2nd 2008

20dub talk - October 2nd 2008

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 21

How do we prevent this site from being just a flash in the pan?

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 22

Build remarkable content

Remarkableadjective Pronunciation: \ri-ˈmär-kə-bəl\

Something which people will remark about.

23dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Initial user impressions are generally very positive

But the site can quickly lose its appeal In order to support long term growth, we

needed to build conversation around each question

Constraints: Anonymous everything Heavy reliance on external/search engine traffic Many questions, long tail of quality Primary navigation is random

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 24

Large sitesSites with high traffic per pageSites with low traffic per pageEntertainment sitesSites with an influx of new usersSites with controversial topicsSites with low community

involvement

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 25

Commenting system designed from the ground up.

Goals Drive out poor comments Support remarkable content Support real conversation Give people a sense of ownership

26dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Every comment has vote up and vote down buttons

27dub talk - October 2nd 2008

New comment Registered users: 2.0 points Unregistered users: 1.0 points

Vote button Registered users: 1.0 points Unregistered users: 0.1 points

28dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Progressively degrade comment readability at lower scores

Show undegraded comment to original poster

29dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Voting is unbounded both up and down but…

Makes it easy to find and promote remarkable comments

We are using the lack of information as a design feature

Actual Score Displayed Score

-2.3 -2.3

1.7 1.7

3.5 3.0+

98.6 3.0+

100.1 Awesome

30dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Non threadedComments are sorted by displayed

score, then by date postedReply button on all commentsAll replies to your comment are

highlighted

31dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Original posters are highlighted

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Identity can be established while maintaining anonymity

Visiting a question/comment you made automatically upvotes all it’s children

Returning to a question/comment rewards your repliers

You are personally in charge of voting your repliers correctly

33dub talk - October 2nd 2008

All comments at 3.0+ are displayed in chronological order

Conversation can happen at 3.0+This is the default if you post as a

registered user (2.0) who replies to a poster who regularly returns (1.0)

34dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Commenting systems are generally horribly designed from a sociability perspective

Better conversation is a force multiplier for the social web

Awesome comments is a ground up rethinking of how commenting should be implemented

Still very much an experiment, details will change as the system matures

35dub talk - October 2nd 2008

Bumblebee Labs: http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com

Am I Normal or Not?: http://www.aminormalornot.com

Email me: hang@bumblebeelabs.com

Need a designer? michael@bumblebeelabs.com

dub talk - October 2nd 2008 36